There has been so much talk lately of robots. A quick google search will have you thinking that society is steaming towards either a dystopian future with robot overlords or a utopia where none of us will have to work thanks to AI slaves.
But how much of it is hype and how much of it is hope? And how is it affecting the way organisations find, onboard and grow their people?
The State of AI
Consider your daily interactions with robots today. How often would you say that Netflix recommends the right movie to you? Or Amazon the right product? In my case, not nearly as often as I’d like..
Take a look at Gartner’s following hype cycle:
Technologies like Affective Computing, Cognitive Expert Advisors & Machine Learning are either at the Innovation Trigger or at the peak of Inflated Expectations.
The future is promising, but we’re at least 5–10 years away from these technologies becoming mainstream. And of course, by then, they may look little like what we imagined them to be.
I think robots are exceptional at solving niche problems (such as becoming Go champions or recognising cats in videos). But they’re a long way away from doing what humans do: solving a wide range of problems. Put another way, robots are great specialists; humans are amazing generalists.
The State of HR
Finding, onboarding and developing people is something that requires a generalist. Just look at these examples of how two HR professionals spend their time:
There are so many different tasks and problems to solve. From holding meetings with stakeholders, to recruiting, to onboarding, to managing redundancies, the list goes on and on.
This is a position that clearly requires people with a huge breadth of knowledge, not to mention being highly empathetic and understanding the needs of people & organisations.
Can (and will) robots do all of these?
HR Robots
We are starting to see the beginning of robots doing some specialist, niche, tasks within HR. For example, screening CVs or responding to basic questions. At Protégé, we use these techniques to connect our learners to mentors and flag any issues with the relationship.
In a recent study, Michael Osborne and Carl Frey from Oxford University’s Martin School calculated the susceptibility of 720 occupations to automation, based on nine key skills. It found that HR administrative jobs had a 90% chance of being automated by 2035, but HR managers, directors and officers were far less likely to be replaced by robots in the next 20 years.
I don’t believe that robots will replace HR anytime soon. I believe that the profession requires generalists and robots are no where near that level of sophistication. We will continue to see more niche applications which will make our lives easier but nobody is getting replaced anytime soon.
The interesting question is: what happens if we reach a critical mass of these “specialist” robots? Though individually they’re useless without humans, collectively, they combine the breadth & depth to solve any problem.
I don’t know what that critical mass is, how fast robots are moving towards it and if there are some inevitable bottlenecks which will stop their advance. I do know however that it’s going to take a long time.
